Monday, October 31, 2011

As I'd just painted a mess of guard infantry I thought it was time to work on some vehicles. There are a number of Thousand Sons transports and whatnot that have been languishing in various states of disarray, so I settled in to get all of them brought up to the same level of painting.

First up is the group shot. Quite a few vehicles being batch painted at once, but the heavy lifting (the reds) is done, so now it's just a matter of doing all the detail work. Still need to add the Bone and White, but after that they'll be nearly complete!

A pair of Dreadclaw-styled drop pods for the infantry, based on the excellent tutorial by Old School Terminator over at Dark Future Games. The build on these is super simple, and ends up being a rather passable adaptation of the FW variant. ...And half the cost!

I also built two more Rhino chassis using the excellent add-on kit from Machinator over at Blood and Skulls Industry. Unlike the previous Rhino, I wanted to allow for some armament swaps, so I left the top hatches separate, and added some magnetized havok missile launchers (allowed in the TF Age of the Emperor codex I'm using).

I wanted to add a Whirlwind to the force (as the upcoming event is set early in the heresy and will pit the still-all-loyalist Marines against a myriad of foes), and went with an old-school approach based on an old White Dwarf set of instructions to build a Whirlwind Launcher out of some plasticard and a pair of 40mm bases. Some decorations and a missile launch in progress, and it turned out pretty decent!

The second Rhino will likely serve as a transport, but I included another ringed top hatch for use in the future (or as a turret ring for the previously built Predator, for those times I don't wish to include side sponsons).

All in all, a fair bit of forward progress. Once these are done, all that remains are a further 20 infantry, a pair of Contemptor Dreadnoughts and Magnus the Red himself!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The fine folks over at the Tempus Fugitives have released the initial mission pack for the campaign weekend in March - "Hammer of the Gods". Set on the recently-rediscovered Machine World of Godhammer, several factions will battle for supremacy over the planet. The weekend will consist of a number of battles both on the surface, and on/around the series of space elevators known as Skyhooks, with the results of the battles affecting the outcome of subsequent battles (and as I understand it, subsequent campaign weekends set on the same planet).

That said, I pulled all the Thousand Sons out to see exactly where things stand, and decide what I wanted to take for the campaign weekend. I was pleased to note that I'm well past the half-way point on getting the army painted!

The first mission outlined in the campaign pack is the "Skyhook" mission, in which small forces (1000pts) vie for control of the space elevators, which will allow for easier deployment of the ground assault force missions subsequently. There are some restrictions to the army choices however:

Only units entering play via Deep Strike may be held in reserve.

The following units may be used in a Skyhook battle without any additional rules – Jetbikes; Jump Infantry; Jet Infantry; Beasts; Skimmers

The following units may be used in a Skyhook battle but suffer from the ‘unstable footing’ special rule – Infantry; Heavy Infantry; Bike Infantry; Cavalry; Monstrous Creatures; Walkers.

Your Skyhook army may NOT include flyers, units with Structure points, Gargantuan Creatures or any Apocalypse Formations. Vehicles detailed only in Forge World's Imperial Armour publications may be used. If a vehicle is described in more than one publication the most recent version must be used.

UNSTABLE FOOTING: Models affected by this rule must take a Dangerous Terrain test at the start of each turn. Wounds suffered cause Instant Death. This represents the rapidly moving and unstable platform on which they are fighting slipping from beneath them and pitching them headlong over the edge.

Unfortunately, my Thousand Sons are more of a heavy assault force, with most units either not allowed for use in the Skyhook game (Tanks primarily), or subject to the Unstable Footing rule. That said, my initial run at a thousand point list that was as little affected by Unstable Footing ended up pretty thin:

I'm not 100% sold on this list - while it utilized the Assault Vets and Jetbikes, it does feel a bit too "all the eggs in one basket" for my tastes, so I may cut down on the Vets a bit and add in some regular Tactical marines to give the list some flexibility (at the risk of more models plummeting to their doom each round).

The second mission type is "Invasion Team Battles" wherein two players join forces, each bringing 2000 points following the standard FOC, though one player on the team may include a single Superheavy. As I have a Falchion (legion Shadowsword) in the works, I'm hoping I can find a suitable partner for this portion of the event, though I'll be making a second list sans Superheavy. In the meantime, the list looks like this:

Alternately, instead of playing a doubles game, one of the options is to take a single 4000 point army including a single superheavy, so I took a pencil to it and came up with a first cut at the Big List:

Pretty much uses up every model that I've build for the Thousand Sons so far, with the exception of Magnus the Red, and a pair of Contemptor Dreadnoughts. I'm waiting to find out what the FOC restrictions are for the 4000 point option however. If it's designed such that I need to essentially build two separate 2000 point armies I won't be able to do it as I don't have the mandatory 4 Troops choices. I could get around it by building another ten Tactical marines and running them as four separate ten man squads, but I'm hoping to avoid buying and building any more models for the army. On the other hand, it may behoove me to just focus on doing the 2000 point game - that way there's less that I need to finish painting, as well as fewer models to have to package and send across the ocean risking damage or loss...

Given the above 4000 point list as the options from which I may pick and choose for the Skyhook or Invasion Team missions, I'd be happy to receive any suggestions about alternate army selections for those missions!

Friday, October 21, 2011

It's been crazy busy at work of late, but I did manage to find a little time to polish off the Veteran squads.

2nd Platoon, 1st Squad - The heavy infantry killers, armed with a trio of plasma guns, a plasma pistol and poweraxe-toting sergeant, and the 2nd platoon standard. It has no in-game effect, just a decorative addition.

2nd Platoon, 2nd Squad - The Anti-tank squad, armed with three melta gunss, a sergeant with a power fist and the squad demolitions upgrade.

While I was about it, I started rebasing the older models that are being folded into the new army. In this case the advisers - I decided the regimental command staff seconded to D company would wear red armor to help them stand out a bit. There's a fair number of models from the older version of the army that will be getting rebased. Luckily it's a simple matter of repainting them from grey to earth tones and adding a bit of static grass. Easy peasy!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

After the better part of two months hammering away at my Thousand Sons, I decided I needed a change of pace color-wise to keep me sane. So much crimson and gold! That said I risked a foray into the Closet of Doom and pulled out some of the glorious 7th that have been languishing in a primered state since earlier this summer, and got cracking.

I didn't want to jump in on the huge mass of vanilla troopers, but did want to get a chunk of infantry on the painting desk, so I figured the two Veteran squads would fit the bill. The first squad is the heavy infantry killer squad, armed with a trio of plasma guns, and a plasma pistol/power axe wielding sergeant. As both squads are intended to be carried into battle via Valkyrie/Vendettas, they all got Grav Chutes from Forge World. In addition I tried to add a bit more personality to the units, using a mix of Catachan bare arms, FW respirator helmets, and plenty of extra pouches and gear (hard to see in the partially-painted state though). Essentially I was going for a more rough-and-tumble look for the veterans to contrast with the more uniform look of the regular troopers. Still a lot of work to do on these of course, for the most part each color only has two or three of four stages complete. Lots of highlighting and details yet to add!

The second Veterans squad are the Demolitions/Tank Hunters squad, with a trio of Melta guns, demolition charges, krak grenades and so on. The Sergeants in the two units pictured (as well as the rest of the officers in the army) have breastplates taken from the Fantasy Empire Greatswords kit, to hearken back to the old RT-era officers look. Plenty left to do of course, adding the red piping on the tunics and trousers, as well as the yellow for the weapons casings should hopefully help the models pop. At the moment they're rather monochromatic.

Hoping I can find some time to finish these off over the upcoming weekend!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Managed to finish up the basic paint jobs on the Jetbikes and Scouts over the weekend and snapped a couple pictures to share!

Here's the whole unit - I scrounged through my bits box for a number of different lengths of flying stand so the unit has a bit of a sense of motion to it. The flying stands have all been trimmed, drilled and pinned to the models for stability.

The models were originally built prior to the newest version of the codex for the Tempus Fugitives events - in previous incarnations, the Thousand Sons were allowed to buy sorcerer sergeants for various squads though some of those options have been removed in the more recent version. Originally he was to be armed with a force weapon (hence the khopesh style sword) but at this point he's only allowed a power weapon. That being the case, this one (and the one on the Terminator sergeant) have been painted in the blue power weapon colors that I use as opposed to the green force weapon color. This allows me to quickly identify what the model is armed with on the table even if the actual weapons are the same style.

Can't go wrong with a pair of melta guns in your jet bike squadron, now can you? The squad serves a dual purpose - one, to deliver the melta guns into position to melt down some tanks, and two to act as a locator beacon for deep striking or teleporting models (of which the Thousand Sons have a lot)!

Two vanilla marines to round out the squad. It was only after taking the pictures that I noticed that I have a little splotch of gold on the front of one of the bikes. Curses! Gotta fix that.

Finally, the five man Recon Marine (aka Scout) squad. Fairly straightforward head swap and the addition of the old-style missile launcher and they're good to go.

About Me

I've been an avid follower of 40k since the original days of Rogue Trader. Back in 1988 I picked up my first copy of the rulebook and good old RTB01 - the box of plastic beaky space marines and the rest as they say is history. 20 years later I'm still playing with little army men... And enjoying every minute of it!